# Superheroes VS The Bomb **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [September 10, 2016, 12:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/superheroes-vs-the-bomb/765489 "2016-09-10T00:49:30Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 8\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [September 12, 2016, 5:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/superheroes-vs-the-bomb/765489/41 "2016-09-12T17:01:19Z")
> [@GoodOmens](#): > > Could one of the Invisible Woman’s force fields be strong enough to contain such a blast? Or (and this is probably ridiculous) Cap’s shield? Well, in the original _Secret Wars_ series, the Human Torch uses one of his “nova bursts” (which has been described in various accounts as equivalent to a small nuclear explosion). Cap crouches behind his shield about fifty feet away, survives without injury or even minor inconvenience. He wasn’t even sweating. And it was indeed completely ridiculous. ---
**Author:** ![YogSothoth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/y/8edcca/32.png) [@YogSothoth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/YogSothoth)\ **Post date:** [September 12, 2016, 5:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/superheroes-vs-the-bomb/765489/42 "2016-09-12T17:36:01Z")
> [@Bryan\_Ekers](#): > > Well, Spider-Man was in a somewhat similar predicament in the second DC/Marvel crossover [back in 1981.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superman_and_Spider-Man) Doctor Doom had built a reactor that was running out of control and while Superman held the core together (!), Spider-Man tried to fix a smashed control panel and shut the reactor down before it destroyed Earth. His spider-sense guided him through the process. > > At the very least, he’d be alert to the huge danger and if he moved quickly enough on pure reflex, I can see him disassembling/breaking the bomb enough to shut it off. Of course, if it’s one of those comic-book bombs with a series of unlikely and elaborate failsafes… Sorry, I have to be pedantic here, but it bothers me that they allowed his spider sense to be some catch-all super ability all on its own. Sure, it makes sense if a heavy boulder’s being thrown at him, or he’s falling into a pit of spikes, but spiders and Peter Parker especially have no concept of what the electronics on a nuke does. He would get no immediate danger reading from pushing any buttons or breaking any wires because none of that can be sensed. Unless he already knew how to disable a nuke, a spider sense would not help him at all in figuring out what to do. Its not like he can just look at something and his brain says “DANGER!”, he has to already know what it does for his mind to subconsciously tell him /soapbox > [@Chronos](#): > > And isn’t one of Spider-Man’s less-discussed powers an immunity to radiation (I mean, he does after all have radioactive blood)? So he would probably even survive the dirty-bomb fizzle, too. And Wolverine certainly would. Radiation sure, but what about the heat? ---
**Author:** ![The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/the_other_waldo_pepper/32/12370_2.png) [@The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Other_Waldo_Pepper)\ **Post date:** [September 12, 2016, 5:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/superheroes-vs-the-bomb/765489/43 "2016-09-12T17:49:43Z")
> [@YogSothoth](#): > > Sorry, I have to be pedantic here, but it bothers me that they allowed his spider sense to be some catch-all super ability all on its own. Sure, it makes sense if a heavy boulder’s being thrown at him, or he’s falling into a pit of spikes, but spiders and Peter Parker especially have no concept of what the electronics on a nuke does. He would get no immediate danger reading from pushing any buttons or breaking any wires because none of that can be sensed. Unless he already knew how to disable a nuke, a spider sense would not help him at all in figuring out what to do. Its not like he can just look at something and his brain says “DANGER!”, he has to already know what it does for his mind to subconsciously tell him IIRC, during the Kaine storyline they made it pretty clear that his spider-sense is just precognition. So, yeah, he gets a DANGER! reaction if a falling object is about to land on him or if someone is about to shoot him in the back – but he could plausibly get that same DANGER! reaction if he’s about to cut the blue wire, or if he’s about to cut the red wire, or – _huh, my spidey-sense isn’t going off even though I’m about to cut the green wire? Well, then, I guess cutting the green wire is the smart move._ ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [September 12, 2016, 6:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/superheroes-vs-the-bomb/765489/44 "2016-09-12T18:33:02Z")
> [@YogSothoth](#): > > Sorry, I have to be pedantic here, but it bothers me that they allowed his spider sense to be some catch-all super ability all on its own. Sure, it makes sense if a heavy boulder’s being thrown at him, or he’s falling into a pit of spikes, but spiders and Peter Parker especially have no concept of what the electronics on a nuke does. He would get no immediate danger reading from pushing any buttons or breaking any wires because none of that can be sensed. Unless he already knew how to disable a nuke, a spider sense would not help him at all in figuring out what to do. Its not like he can just look at something and his brain says “DANGER!”, he has to already know what it does for his mind to subconsciously tell him > > /soapbox That’s not actually what happened, though I admit my short description didn’t do it justice. Spider-Man has _some_ idea of how to repair the reactor’s control panel (though he’s painfully aware of how out-of-his-depth he is), because as Peter Parker he’s something of an electronics prodigy. The repair comes down to a fairly convenient “flip this switch one way or the other” decision and his spider-sense goes “crazy” when he starts to move in one direction, prompting him to flip the switch the other way and save the day. It’s rather weakly contrived, but the story overall was very good, and a huge improvement over the first crossover published in 1976. I’d venture to say it was the best-written DC/Marvel crossover out of the five or six I’ve read. How this would translate to Spider-Man being confronted with a ticking atom bomb is up to the whim of the writer, I admit. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [September 12, 2016, 7:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/superheroes-vs-the-bomb/765489/45 "2016-09-12T19:00:45Z")
Captain America’s shield could certainly itself withstand a nuke: It’s canonically the single most indestructible object in the Universe. It might even be able to protect Cap himself, since it has the physics-defying ability to absorb momentum as well as energy, though I don’t know if there are any limits on that ability. But he’s not going to be able to save a whole city like that, because no matter how tough the shield is, it’s not all that big, and anything not in its shadow is still going to get nuked. ---
**Author:** ![Lochdale](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/edb3f5/32.png) [@Lochdale](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lochdale)\ **Post date:** [September 12, 2016, 7:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/superheroes-vs-the-bomb/765489/46 "2016-09-12T19:07:11Z")
Thor has survived nuclear explosions before. He also just sent both nukes and nuclear power plants that were about to explode into another dimension. ---
**Author:** ![TBG](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/c89c15/32.png) [@TBG](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TBG)\ **Post date:** [September 12, 2016, 11:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/superheroes-vs-the-bomb/765489/47 "2016-09-12T23:40:18Z")
Well, we all know how Cap & Bucky would deal with this situation. > [@Chronos](#): > > Nitpick: It’s “somebody set _up us_ the bomb”. What you say _!!_ ---
**Author:** ![Ethilrist](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ethilrist/32/4604_2.png) [@Ethilrist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ethilrist)\ **Post date:** [September 13, 2016, 12:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/superheroes-vs-the-bomb/765489/48 "2016-09-13T00:30:47Z")
I remember reading a Superman comic back in the 70’s in which a nuclear-powered spaceship, parked at the Metropolis Spaceport, had a reactor that was going critical. He pulled it out of the ship, wrapped it up in his cape, and it went nuclear. The cape bulged out, with little mushroom-cloud-shaped poofs of smoke here and there. All was fine. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/superheroes-vs-the-bomb/765489.md?page=2)